TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT STRATEGY FOR HERITAGE, AIMING FOREIGN AUDIENCES
TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT STRATEGY FOR HERITAGE, AIMING FOREIGN AUDIENCES

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary heritage management has shifted the attention towards the larger public, which is increasingly more relevant in taking decisions related to what heritage to valorize, how to put it under focus, and how to use it as value-creator. Nowadays we talk about the restitution of heritage to communities - by recovering its “memory”, a community can better understand the present and benefit of its resources for further complex development. In this new framework, our study investigated the options of museums and heritage sites to more effectively manage their organizations, to make them for appealing to the wider public in general, to foreign tourists in particular. The present article comprises two parts: the first one explores the existent literature regarding cultural heritage sites as tourist attractions and the established typologies of cultural tourists. Also, it takes a look at the management of cultural heritage having in mind tourists (domestic and foreign), and at the implications that conservation, authenticity, and partnership might have on cultural sites, the neighboring communities and their immediate environment. The second part presents the main results of an online survey that explores tourists’ visiting habits while abroad, their motivations and the relationship between the tourists’ representations of museums and heritage sites, and their actions (e.g. visiting). Drawing both on the existing literature and the results of the survey, we propose a series of recommendations for boosting the number of museum and heritage sites visits amongst foreign audiences

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